There is no accounting for taste. I like long hair. Other people like short hair. But I was fortunate to find a longhaired girlfriend. Stacy had beautiful hair to just past her bra strap. I was brown and slightly wavy and very thick. She would let me brush it and I used to enjoy letting it slide between my fingers slowly feeling the silky thick strands on my arms. We had talked about her growing it longer but she always fell back on the defense that it wasn't very practical for her job as a dental hygienist. "It would just get in the way," she said.

One night, after I had brushed her hair, she told me why she did not want to grow her hair longer. She really didn't want her hair as long as it was, but this was the longest she could stand, and it seemed to be long enough for me. She was afraid that it might affect our relationship if she cut it. I really didn't think so, I was in love with her and her hair was a bonus, but she seemed sincere, so I dropped the subject for several years.

After a while I forgot the conversation and we got engaged. Stacy changed her style a few times and, when I didn't seem to mind too much, she kept cutting it shorter and shorter. By the time it was a shoulder-grazing bob, I asked about her growing it out again. She gave me a look (I knew that look) and I dropped it again.

One Saturday I stopped off at a yard sale. I would like to say I stopped because of the stuff they had on sale, but it was the lady who was selling the stuff that had caught my eye. She was a roundish woman, in her late 40's I had guessed. She had a friendly face, and lively eyes, but her hair was what made me stop. Black as coal, it reached to her ankles where it was neatly trimmed in straight line. It was very thick all the way to the ends. Like a cape it flowed with her movements. If I had not pulled over, I would have likely caused an accident by staring.

I browsed the card tables and picked up knickknacks but I have no idea what I was looking at. My eyes were glued to that marvelous hair. My eyes must have been burning her back because she finally walked right up to me and said she had noticed me staring at her hair. I stammered something about it being lovely, and how I had never seen anything like it. She smiled.

In conversation I discovered this woman was in her 60's! I was amazed. She told me that her husband had died last year, and that she as finally getting around to cleaning out a few of his things. When I finally got the nerve to ask about her hair, she told me about her husband's passion for long hair. How he had urged her to grow it longer and longer. That at one point it had trailed behind her on the ground. I tried to imagine what that might have been like as she ran her hand through the shiny thick strands and wistfully remarked she had worn it down like this today in honor of him.

I opened up to her for no reason and told her about Stacy. How she had once had long hair, but now it was shoulder length and getting shorter. The woman nodded. She had been the same way. But her husband had won her over with a gift. Reaching over next to my hand she picked up a silver-handled boar bristle brush. "This was John's wedding gift to me," she said, "We had a lot of memories with this brush. You can have it for $10. I have a feeling you will get good use out of it. Use this on your fiancée's hair a few times. She will be amazed at the difference it can make."

I was beginning to like this woman. I bought the brush and headed home, trying to imagine Stacey's hair trailing behind her on the ground. When I got home I put the brush in a safe place and kept it. A wedding gift made sense. With the wedding only a few months away, I could wait.

When our wedding day arrived, Stacey's hair was the shortest I ever hoped to see it. Chin length, stylish, and beautiful. But not like it had been. I had wrapped the brush and left it in the hotel room. It was to be my private gift to her. I hoped that I would have as much success with it as the previous owners had. We spoke our vows, and secretly at the altar I added "for longer or shorter." I would love Stacy no matter how long - or short - her hair was. After the reception we went to the hotel room. We were so tired that we crashed on the bed together. After a few kisses we were sound asleep. In the morning, as I opened my eyes to look at my wife, I saw what had to be a dream. Stacy was sitting at the desk with the brush in her hand. Her hair was just past her bra strap, wavy and thick as I had remembered when we fell in love. She was looking at me strangely. I had a feeling it was not a dream.

She came over and sat on the bed in silence. She handed me the brush. And turned her back to me, presenting her hair for me to brush as I had so many years ago. In a soft voice she said, "Brush my hair, and tell me I am not crazy."

I was wide-awake now. I sat up and brushed her hair, wondering what was happening, but unwilling to question it. As I pulled the brush through her thick brown hair her hair came with it. Not off her head, but growing from her head. I looked at the silky length of hair now almost touching Stacey's waist. And unbelieving, pulled the brush through her hair again.

This time the length of her hair increased an easy 12 inches. Stacy stood straight up and whirled around. Her hair fanned out behind her and floated down surrounding her completely to her hips. "What is happening?!" she demanded. I was at a loss as well. I told her the story of the old woman and the gift. She listened and to her credit did not get angry. She just looked at the brush. Then I saw a twinkle in her eye. She lifted the brush from my hand and brushed her own hair. She made several long smooth strokes. I tried to maintain eye contact but finally could not resist any longer. As I glanced down Stacey's body I saw the shroud of hair had extended from her hips to her ankles. And she stood there with her hands out to me, in her nightgown, and hair from head to toe.

We made furious love all day that day. We locked the door; we did not answer the phone. A few times, just out of curiosity, I brushed Stacey's hair a few more times and it kept on growing. By the time the sun went down, her hair was dozens of feet long. It was entangled around us, the furniture, and little silky piles of it were piled around the room. It was everywhere.

We lay there on the bed, covered in a mound of Stacey's hair. She said, "That was unbelieveable! Too bad it has to go." I knew she was right, aside from the fact that we would never be able to untangle it, it was a little too obvious. I was about halfway through figuring out how we would dispose of the excess when the moonlight shone through the room and everywhere it touched the strands of Stacey's incredibly abundance of hair, the hair disappeared.

Stacy must have seen it too. She sat up and started to the window. I had to go too, we were pretty well tied up at that point. And as she opened the curtains, her hair... all of it that we had brushed out during the day faded away to nothingness.

I looked over at Stacy, and saw her face in the moonlight framed by her hair - her hair as it had been yesterday at the wedding. She stared out the window and gently raised a hand to the back of her neck. And felt her neck. I could see tears welling up in her eyes. I put my arms around her and whispered in her ear "I want to play with YOU all night now."

It was just the right thing to say.

The brush continued to work its magic just fine. Some days we would get it out and have fun for a few hours. Some evenings we would just keep the curtains tightly closed. A few times I tried to see how long the brush could get Stacey's hair to grow. There didn't seem to be any limit. I usually stopped when there was a large mound on the floor, and Stacy was getting bored. Several times Stacy brushed out her hair in the morning and went out with it long and magnificent. The dentist complimented her on the quality of her hair extensions. He never guessed the truth. How could he?

Stacy loved the ability to grow her hair as long as she wanted whenever she wanted. As time went by, she sort of stopped cutting her 'real' hair (as we called it.) We had two lovely girls in the years that passed. By the time Lara, our second, was born, Stacy could sit on the ends of her 'real' hair. The girls got their hands on 'mommy's special brush' once as they got a little older. You never saw such a mess. It took both of us to hold them in the moonlight. They wanted to keep their hair long enough to drag the ground.

We kept the brush a secret from the girls the best we could. When the girls were old enough to talk to them about it, we told them about its powers, and let them know that they could share it with each other when they got married. But their hair was plenty long enough by then that they didn't think they'd need it. I looked at my wife's hair, now all 'real' and just touching the floor, and realized, we didn't either... except maybe just a few times for fun.